


namesigns

by highwayfawn (orphan_account)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, Muteness, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-11 23:44:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/highwayfawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl learned in pieces, picking up words and phrases here and there, pushing them together to form sentences in ways that made sense to him despite not being proper, not having the right grammar and inflections - Beth's teacher would have cringed at some of the things Daryl signs, put together roughly like he's in a hurry; some of them don't even make sense but they've all learned to understand him, understand what each odd quirk in his signing means to him, and it's interesting, like listening to a person who speaks two languages, slipping back and forth, picking and choosing certain words to say in certain ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	namesigns

Beth's never heard Daryl speak. When he'd first arrived at her family's farm she'd thought he was deaf, unresponsive and pensive - then, a few days later, decided he was just an asshole because it was clear his hearing was just as good as all of his other whip-sharp senses, and it had taken her a whole week of observation, watching him make lewd gestures at Glenn and wave his hands wildly while he spoke to Rick, before she'd realized that he could hear fine - he just couldn't talk.

She's almost positive that he has the ability, because every now and then he lets out a rough rumble of a laugh, or a growl, and one night back on the farm she'd thought she'd heard muttering from inside his tent; that was back when she was too timid, too wary to investigate, she'd been _afraid of him_ then, and afraid that she'd catch him in some compromising situation, or that her rude invasion would be enough to set off his raging temper and she would have to deal with the consequences. Now she looks at him with child-like curiosity, wishing she'd stepped closer to his tent that night, close enough to catch the sound of his voice sliding over syllables, close enough to hear the thick Georgian accent she bets he has.

Beth likes to imagine what his southern twang would sound like; nobody in the group knows Daryl's voice, but she thinks it would be similar his signing - whiskey-smooth, loose and not very eloquent, a voice that got the word across quickly without much care. She can see his accent rather than hear it, in the way he moves his hands over some words sloppily, certain signs exaggerated, shifted slightly from what they're supposed to look like. Beth had learned ASL in school from people who had used it their entire lives, she learned the all of the rules and principals, how to do things by the book. Daryl learned in pieces, picking up words and phrases here and there, pushing them together to form sentences in ways that made sense to him despite not being  _proper_ , not having the right grammar and inflections - Beth's teacher would have cringed at some of the things Daryl signs, put together roughly like he's in a hurry; some of them don't even make sense but they've all learned to understand him, understand what each odd quirk in his signing means to him, and it's interesting, like listening to a person who speaks two languages, slipping back and forth, picking and choosing certain words to say in certain ways.

Many of the stranger things Daryl signs have significance, words he signs differently to make a point. Beth knew somebody in middle school who came from Mexico, a boy one year younger than her who spoke English better than half the native students in the school, but certain words - mom, home, sister, a myriad of cuss words - he always spoke in Spanish, not because he didn't know them but because they just meant more to him in his own language. Watching Daryl is like listening to that boy, holding certain words close to him, reserving the language he's made up for the things that carry the most meaning. When Daryl talks about the home he grew up in he uses the sign for  _hurt_ , positioned above his left shoulder to distinguish it from regular hurt. He uses the real home sign for the prison, fingers touching quickly beside his mouth before they move up to his cheekbone - but still he modifies it, uses the P sign instead of just pinching his fingers together, does it fast, and twists his wrist a little while he moves his hand upwards. 

Daryl's remodeled language shows especially in the way he assigns names to his friends. Merle's name-sign (Beth has only seen it a handful of times, when Daryl talks about his past - always with that modified pain sign, fingers twisting right above the left shoulder: _home, past, my old life_  - hurt has come to mean many things) is the M hand-shape, held sideways over Daryl's heart. Beth thinks that might break some rule, positioning and movement or something, but Daryl has never followed rules; Rick gets three name-signs: first an altered sign for police, a crooked C that he holds to the center of his chest, then later an R that he holds above his forehead. Now it's that same R hand-shape, held against his heart, leaning to the side in a mimic of how Daryl positions Merle's name on the rare occasion he signs it; unlike Merle's though Rick's name-sign gets dragged across Daryl's chest, drawn in towards his sternum, a quick brush of fingers over his shirt. Carol's name-sign is a quick open hand closing into a fist under Daryl's chin -  _brave woman_ , Beth thinks, is what it means translated roughly from Daryl's own version of ASL, a sign resembling  _strong_  held in the feminine position - it's fitting.

Maggie gets a huge waving C at first (for crazy, everybody assumes) but eventually it gets refined into something else, an M that gets dragged across his chin in a reference to  _farmer_ , and Maggie decides she likes this one much better, though Daryl still uses the C sometimes - always accompanied by a laugh or a deadly look of irritation. Rick's friend Shane's sign had been a hastily thrown S, and sometimes an A tapped to the side of Daryl's head,  _asshole_. Beth's father gets the sign for farmer that swoops from underneath the chin to settle in the center of Daryl's chest. Lori gets an L positioned under Daryl's chin and everybody jokes about it looking like a sign for  _I'm going to shoot myself;_  eventually Daryl gets mad about it and starts signing it at his cheek like  _girl_. Glenn is assigned a G that starts at the forehead and moves into the sign for  _smart_ , Carl is known as _kid_  with a C, T-Dog is - not so creatively - the T hand-shape and two snaps of the fingers to say _dog_. When in a rush he signs the first letters of their names, when they're running or panicked or there's just no time, or when he's frustrated to the point where his hands get stiff and stumble over the simplest of signs, but usually he uses each of their name-signs, holds them close to his body with warmth. Rick's, Beth notices, is the only name that gets positioned over his heart, slid over skin - occasionally Daryl slips into the forehead-R, almost always when he's scared, eyes wide and hands frantic as he throws up a sloppy hand-shape. 

Beth isn't given a name until after they've moved into the prison - at least not that she's aware of. He calls her B, short and without much thought, until one morning she catches him talking to Rick, telling him who's going on the next run and he goes through Glenn, T-Dog and Maggie before he signs somebody she doesn't recognize, a quick swoop of an open hand across his face that ends in pinched fingers before quickly transitioning to a B. She thinks over who it could be, who this _beautiful_   _B_  that Daryl is suddenly talking about is, and she goes over each of the group members again and again trying to figure it out until she's laying in bed that night and it hits her: aside from Glenn, Maggie, T-Dog and Daryl, the only other person who went on the run is  _herself_. She thinks it over some more, wondering if maybe she'd just been too far away to see what Daryl had signed correctly, or maybe he'd meant something different, but.

She falls asleep with a blush high on her cheeks that night, imagining Daryl's rough voice in her ear saying  _beautiful Beth_.


End file.
